The Picture of Tom Marvolo Riddle
by ibuzoo
Summary: „What about Love, Tom?" „An illusion," he spits immediately, because that's what this is, isn't it, a delusion, a deception, a dreamlike myth because they aren't real, this isn't real. He swallows, presses, „What is this? What are you?" She castes her eyes down and she whispers, „To define, is to limit."


**The picture of Tom Marvolo Riddle**

**Challenge: **Tomionekinkmeme Summer Challenge

**Rating: **T

**AU:** The picture of Dorian Gray

**Word count: **3261

**Summary: **„What about Love, Tom?"

„An illusion," he spits immediately, because that's what this is, isn't it, a delusion, a deception, a dreamlike myth because they aren't real, _this_ isn't real. He dwells on the words on his lips, tastes them on his tongue and he needs to know, needs to understand what this is, the gut-wrenching contract of his visceral, the bile on his tongue whenever he wakes of this phases, so he swallows, presses, „What is this? What are you?"

She castes her eyes down and it's the first time something like melancholia writes on her face, ages it to something more mature, more natural and she whispers, the same accusing tone as the voice that accompanies him trough nights and days, just a puff of intensity, „To define, is to limit."

**A/N: **I didn't upload a story in some weeks and this feels like walking on egg shells again. I jotted this story down in like 5 hours or so and I'm still not really satisfied because writing weights heavy on my fingers at the moment. This is really loosely based on Dorian Gray's story - and I mean loosely, tho i used around ten quotes of the book.

**Disclaimer: **This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

* * *

**o.**

**_Our bodies flicker toward extinction._**

**i.**

Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty.

It makes princes of those who have it.

**ii.**

The painting is strangely vivid, the colors brilliant and shining in a thick oily filler paste and it appears almost feisty, vital, _alive_. The eyes are in the same cold grey as the subject remembers his own, a flicker of cruelty reflecting behind them, carefully hidden by a mysterious gleam, his beauty that veils the darkness but entrances the audience, judges it almost. The picture is hypnotizing, an immortal beauty no one could deny him and his eyes cast glances around, try to find someone, anyone who doesn't adore his presence, his portrayal.

But there is none.

His fingers stop hesitantly before the thick coloured linen, uncertain if the oil already dried but the moment he brushes the surface he's met by a silken caress on his fingertips, a sec touch against his skin.

Abraxas starts to laugh and clicks his glass of Whisky against the one in Tom's hands, a twinkle in his eyes, his voice strangely rascal, almost amused, „Do you like it?"

Tom looks around once more, graves the amazed expressions on his guest's faces, basks in the furtive glances the women give him, the blushes, the envy of their men, the veneration. A smirk graces his elegantly curved lips, matches the one on the portrait but he keeps silent and leads the glass to his lips.

**iii.**

The first deformation paints itself right on his nose, sharper as he recalls it, paler, peaked one night when he returns from a particular dark business. The rest looks immaculate, pristine as himself so he drops his thoughts and goes to bed.

**iv.**

There's a buzzing in his ear.

He ignores it.

**v.**

A scratch supervenes after he kills Lord Crouch in a heated argument, smashes his head against the chimney cap with force, again and again, blood clinging to his hands and he lets go of the poor man's body, watches it slump to his feet. He calls a maid to bring him a bowl of water and a towel to wash the sticky red of his fingers and his eyes spot the next abnormality on the canvas, the scrape reaching from the left nasal wing up right under his eye, a crater right on his portrayed face.

He throws the towel in the fire.

_(he asks Abraxas for the address of the studio the next day, folds the handwritten note neatly in his hands, packs it away, breaths)_

**vi.**

He's Tom Marvolo Riddle.

_(he still is)_

**vii.**

The studio is humble and small, wooden counters are standing at opposite walls to show finished artworks, one by one beautiful portraits of women and men of different types and social classes, all of the same quality, the same love for details, the same vital vein right under the colours like his own. The atelier looks nothing like the exclusivity the portraits emanate and Tom asks himself why Abraxas bothered to buy him a portrait at all, here of all things, why couldn't he just buy some superfluous inflated bottle of some old Brandy or Whisky like all the others did?

„Can I help you?"

The artist was nothing Tom ever imagined, a woman - no girl, barely twenty he guesses, young and rosy cheeks, brown, wild hair that falls in cascades over her shoulders, ravenous, unrestrained like the gleam in the eyes that stare at him, dare him, mock him.

He approaches her carefully, eyes pinch to slits but he takes her hand, a firm handshake and his voice is smooth, elegant, charming, „I do hope so. My name's Riddle, I assume you must me Mrs. Granger?"

„Indeed I am, how can I help you?", a smile accompanies her words and Tom can't help but ask himself how much these lips can scream in agony, how far he can cut her cheeks open to plaster this boastful grin to her face, stupid little girl who dares to mock him, to taunt him.

His breath evens out, the anger still lingering in his body but he mastered to hide it long ago. He takes a card out of his wallet, hands it carefully over the counter and observes how brown eyes read the index, his address, his name. „A friend of mine bought one of your portraits for my birthday and I'm afraid but you have to come and restore it again. You'll see the colours were still wet and the picture changed."

„Changed?", her voice filled with skepticism but something else creeps in, something curious and Tom cann't understand her sudden change of tone, accusing, arraigning, sharp, neither the slight repulsion in her eyes. A second later she tilts her head to the right side, taps the card against the counter and Tom breaths in deep, suppresses the urge to hammer her head repeatedly against the counter for treating him in such a manner. Foolish little girl.

„How?"

„Excuse me?"

„You said it changed. How?"

An elegant eyebrow goes up and Tom clears his throat, clearly annoyed, „There are scratches and colour changes."

Surprisingly his words have a rather strange impact on her and he wishes he could cut her pitiful eyes right out of her face.

**viii.**

A hollow shadow appears on the portrait when he returns home, right under his eye socket.

He throws his glass against the wall.

_(the Scotch drips from peaked glass shards to the floor, honey stains on dark wood and the maid cuts herself on them when Tom steps over her hand, presses the tip of his foot down on her delicate fingers until a dark red joins the golden liquid while he ignores the cruel shade the portrait turns as soon as her screams fill the manor)_

**ix.**

„I admit I'm jealous of everything whose beauty does not die, Mrs. Granger," his words are chosen carefully, his tone charming and suave but the girl sees right trough him, sees right to his bones, picks his soul apart with a single glance and Tom stops, really looks at her for the first time and had she been this young from the start?

She throws the wild mess on her head around, a denying gesture and her eyes never leave his frame, his face, when she says, really muses, „Some things are more precious because they don't last long Mr. Riddle."

His face distorts and he snarls, a scathing retort on his lips and he tastes it, the poison, the venom, however when he wants to launch into it, she blinks and he stops once more. Her glance is frozen to the painting on the wall, the brown blowing wide, fingers brushing over the canvas without hesitance and Tom squints his eyes skeptical, watches the way her fingertips smear over his portrayed face, draw the curve of his nose just the right way, a caressing touch and he's not entirely sure why his skin tingles in reality, why it feels wheedled and warm. She leans into the picture a moment later, her hand flat on the canvas, her cheek right on his painted shoulder and he feels her weight against his skin, imaginary curls that thrill his jaw, breaths in her scent, a mixture of oils and pigments and parchment, far too neuter for a woman.

Minutes pass and when she finally speaks again her voice is barely a whisper, a hoarse scrape of pipes while her eyes are blown wide, a deep chocolate circle and Tom breaths in, holds his breath when she murmurs accusing, „You know nothing but shadows Tom, and you think them to be real. You need to stop it before they'll eat you raw."

No more words are spoken that day, but when she bolts a second later Tom can hear the sound of her chiming voice still in his ears, obtrusive, loud, yet whispering, _you need to stop it Tom, stop it stop it stop it. _

**x.**

He doesn't want to be at the mercy of his emotions. He wants to use them, enjoy them, dominate them.

Two murders later his nose on the portrait is almost non existent, a slender bridge with a pointed end, his eyes the same grey, a cruel shimmer on cinder skin. He throws a sheet over it and hides it on the attic where no one would ever see it again.

The voice is still loud and clear in his ears. It doesn't stop.

**xi.**

It doesn't stop.

**xii.**

He meets her in his dreams after that, not every night, not every week, but sometimes she'd show up and they'd sit on a bright blooming clearing that'd bring tears to Edward Cullen's eyes. Everything looks utterly overdramatic with summer heat clinging on his lungs and sun and rain and clouds which feel almost too real to be a dream at all.

She's open during their short encounters, appointments really because she's the one in charge, bursting into his life whenever she feels the time is right and he hates it to be this adrift to his subconscious playing tricks on him. Each time the voices calmed down a bit she graces him with her spirit, her esprit and charm, her ferocity and wit _(and really, how couldn't he fall for a woman like her?)_ and the voices start to sing their hymn again, louder, clearer, with a chorus and a rhyme.

„An artist should create beautiful things, but put nothing of his own life into them," she muses one night, face upwards to the sky, eyes bright illuminated from the changing color spectrum of an Aurora Borealis right over their heads.

„You think so?", he asks curiously and the awe in his own voice makes him feel disgusted, almost anguished.

„I think a lot of things, Tom. What about you? What about art?"

A snarl leaves his perfect lips and for a second he wonders how she sees him in this state, how his face looks like for her, his true face, the ugly truth right under this mask of skin and blood and sinews. He clears his head and glances at her eyes, a dark gleam shimmering behind the pale grey but she doesn't seem to notice or she noticed all along when he answers, voice dripping with moroseness, „It's a malady."

„Religion?"

„The fashionable substitute for belief."

„You are a sceptic," her lips curve up and the smirk matches his own as he counters amused, „Never. Skepticism is the beginning of faith."

She clacks her tongue against the palate and approaches him without fear, lifts her hand to rest it on his shoulder, smoothing the material of his button-down under her palm, fingertips leaving little pressure points. Green and pink reflect in her dark orbs and Tom notices once more how young she really appears, how innocent her youth radiates from her, resonates in her voice, „What about Love, Tom?"

„An illusion," he spits immediately, because that's what this is, isn't it, a delusion, a deception, a dreamlike myth because they aren't real, _this_ isn't real. He dwells on the words on his lips, tastes them on his tongue and he needs to know, needs to understand what this is, the gut-wrenching contract of his visceral, the bile on his tongue whenever he wakes of this phases, so he swallows, presses, „What is this? What are you?"

She castes her eyes down and it's the first time something like melancholia writes on her face, ages it to something more mature, more natural and she whispers, the same accusing tone as the voice that accompanies him trough nights and days, just a puff of intensity, „To define, is to limit."

**xiii.**

He wakes and it's still night, no northern lights on the sky.

There's bile on his tongue.

_(stop it stop it stop it)_

**xiv.**

He visits the garrett every month, observes how the beauty on his portrait twists in a beast, the weathering of a pulchritude right in front of him, the colour of skin how it changes from rosy cheeks to ashen hollows, a green shimmer right under the face, with a flat surface and slits instead of a nose, bright grey shifting to dirty brown and red afterwards, then crimson with little arteries in the yellowish white of his eyeballs. His hair changes from dark silky curls to abiotic grey spiderwebs until nothing remains than a bald scalp strewn with scales, his usual charming smirk not mere than the bleak of teeth.

He's Tom Marvolo Riddle.

_(still) _

He throws the sheet over the canvas and locks the door.

**xv.**

He's Tom Marvolo Riddle.

_(he never was)_

**xvi.**

He never made the effort to visit her before, his dreams were far too real already and when he opens the door to her studio, five years after their last personal encounter, the familiar scent of oils and pigments tingles in his nose, the same mixture from his dreams which taste like fresh rain on his tongue and morning dew on grass branches. It was dreadful.

The portrait under his right arm weights heavy, wrapped in kraft paper layers so no one can see the abomination that laid right under, the monster creeping in the canvas, the heinousness, the blasphemy. She's waiting behind the counter already, statuesque with a knowing glimmer behind dark chocolate veils and she greets him with a nod, his name on her lips when she locks the door behind him and leads the way to the backroom.

Marooned, the back stretches itself in a large room, tables and benches with colors and flowers, glasses full of shimmering powder, golden crystals dancing in a small tank refracting the sunlight that radiates trough the giant rooflights. A bunch of canvas' hang from the walls side by side, all of them drenched in some kind of fluoresced liquid that still drops from the tip of a big brush lying in top of a can, pigments of colorful powder and flower petals he never saw before are soiling a nearby bench while an oily cream rest in the hollow of a mortar, the same brilliant colour smeared on her fingertips - and on a close stretched linen.

Tom sets his own portrait on an easel and steps back, allows Hermione to unwrap the package with careful hands. He doesn't want to see the penury again so he turns around, turns away and glances across the room until his eyes rest on a rather large covered picture, the white sheet pure and contrastive to the chaos around them. Curiosity tickles right under his skin, entrances him, summons him closer until his hand reaches out, lifts the sheet enough to have a look at another picture.

„This is…", words are leaving him, smitten with dumbness his eyes rip open in awe, blinded by the realism that greats him, the liveliness, the vitality right under the linen even more palpable as in his own portrait; the meadow, the clearing in resplendent colors, each blade of grass sharp - almost teetering in a soft breeze - sunrays refracting in different colorshades, illuminating the wild mess of hair on Hermione's portrait, on the bright white dress she's wearing in the painting, in his dreams. He swallows, suddenly furious, rage in his voice, in his hand when he throws the linen back, reveals the whole picture, really spats at her, „How is this possible?"

She's still unwrapping the portrait, judicious as if harming the portrait would harm its owner, her fingers a soft caress on the paper, her voice loud and clear when she chuckles, „You are a wonderful man Tom, and you know more than you think you know - just as you know less than you want to know. Knowledge can be fatal."

Her eyes drill in his and for a second the world just stops like it did all those years ago in his mansion. There's something lurking in her dark depths, something terribly old and wise that makes his spine recoil, makes him _fear _while the voices return in his head singing a hymn to his ignorance, a gospel to his deaf ears, _stop it stop it stop it, _Hermione's voice filters down to him, „It is the uncertainty that charms, a mist makes things wonderful, don't you think?"

He doesn't answer.

He runs.

**xvii.**

Some days later his portrait arrives with the mail, packed in the same kraft paper he delivered it but a single note is attached, reads two words: _Stop it._

In his rage, he throws both in the fire.

_(the flames dance around the portrait, burn down the kraft paper, mock him for his nescience and the voices grow louder and louder until their screams remind him of banshees when they freeze his blood, hands on his head; he yanks the canvas out of the blaze but no trace is on the linen, no hole besides the scorched skin on his fingers)_

**xviii.**

The dreams do not return but her voice is a steady rhythm on his mind, a prayer he can't forget and he remembers her beauty didn't change in the past five years, her youth didn't fade.

He wakes, looks in the mirror and compares the squalor of is portrait to the delicacy he witnessed in her studio until he starts to notice the changes in his mirror, the ashen complexion his skin seems to adapt, the unglossed pointed turn his nose takes, the red shimmer in grey eyes, the hair that thins out more and more.

_(stop it stop it stop it)_

He screams.

**xix.**

He's Tom Marvolo Riddle.

_(not anymore)_

Finally, it stops.

**xx.**

A maid finds him the next morning curled up in his bed, sheets blood-soaked and sweaty, shards of the wrecked mirror all around him, little cuts convoying the deep slashes on his wrists and arms, his beautiful face peaceful, almost as if he's sleeping, his front covered in a layer of dark curls.

He's dead, the portrait they find later hidden under a dozen of linen and sheets, displaying nothing than a blank surface.

**xxi.**

They say you cannot paint a picture of the death, for no artist can catch a soul that's already lost in Hades realm - a single canvas for each person.

When the message of Tom's death arrives at Hermione's studio, the girl is already painting in the backroom, glasses and jars of colours to her naked feet, fingers smudged and smeared of golden stardust, fruity pink against the green of the grass. She looks at her clone in the canvas, the way her eyes are full of graciousness, of love when her lips shape mute syllables, dumb witnesses of her gratitude to a living shell that envies the drawn piece of linen with all of her heart. She watches as her painted self takes the hand of a young man, barely in his early twenties, grey eyes which seem to understand, finally, what this is all about, what really happens with the portraits, the models, and Hermione gazes after them when they turn around in the picture, leaving her behind to find a place in their clearing.

Behind every exquisit thing that exists, there is some magic.

She takes the curtain and covers the scaffold.

**xxii.**

**_Our bodies flicker toward extinction, but if I die, I will wait for you, do you understand?_**


End file.
